This very creepy horror movie is the feature debut for director Nate Ki, who demonstrates both a talent for suggesting rather than spelling out backstory as well as an unabashed streak of cruelty. Where most film-makers would hold back a bit and refrain from traumatising the audience with images of child abuse, suicide, self-mutilation and rape, Ki jumps right in. At least the editing doesn’t linger too long on the worst of it, but there’s still plenty to disturb the viewer with a film that seems to draw as much on the horror traditions of Cantonese cinema as well as western film-makers. For instance, the use of space evokes David Lynch in Lost Highway mode, while the community full of secrets and evil trope brings to mind Ari Aster’s Midsommar, but that might just be accidental.
The story starts with Heung Wing (Cantonese pop star Anson Ip-Sang Kong) getting a phone call summoning him home to Hong Kong because his mother (Bai Ling, on cracking form here) cut out her own tongue, tried to end her life, and has gone into a coma. After visiting her in hospital where there’s not much he can do, Wing heads to the flat where he grew up, a grimy high-rise building in a rough part of town. Memories of his childhood overwhelm Wing, especially his recollection of how he could see ghosts all around him as a child; it was an ability his single-parent mother feared and envied, prompting her to take him to a local temple to get the skill beaten out of him.
